Badgers news: Inside Wisconsin’s Epic Volleyball Border Battle Win

The story of the 2024 Badgers Volleyball season thus far has been one of adversity.

The season 0-3 started while many key players were suffering from injuries. They then lost their Big Ten opener at Minnesota to put themselves in a 0-1 hole in a conference race where you cannot afford to lose any matches.

Adversity returned for the Badgers last weekend when starting libero Lola Schumacher suffered a concussion in warmups at UCLA and DS Gulce Guctekin went to the bench with a recurring back injury.

The Badgers were 18-1 with Schumacher as the starting libero after he took over the jersey in the Baylor match the second weekend of the season. Schumacher was not perfect as the libero, but she brought a steadying presence to a back row that has been up and down since Lauren Barnes graduated in 2021.

Redshirt freshman Saige Damrow took over the libero position at UCLA, and she faced a massive test on Wednesday night against rival Minnesota in her second solo start. The Border Battle is never an easy win, especially against a scrappy Minnesota group that is fighting for every NCAA Tournament seed it can get.

“I knew from the beginning, seeing a new libero in the jersey, that they were going to be targeting me,” Damrow said. “I feel like you just have to fight to keep these balls up.”

The conference-opening loss was an epic five-set match, so it was only fitting that the rematch went five sets as well.

And what a fifth set it was.

The Badgers jumped out to an early 5-2 lead, but then the Gophers battled back to take a 13-12 lead, just one point away from set point. The Badgers tied it up, and in fact, the match was tied 11-11, 12-12, 13-13, 14-14, 15-15, 16-16, 17-17, and 18-18.

The deciding factor proved to be the Badger block, but not in the way you would expect.

The Badgers play into the match as the number one blocking team in the country, with the team recording a gaudy 3.4 stuffs per set in Big Ten play. And yet the Minnesota attackers largely went unscathed through the five full sets of regulation play, as the Badgers only had 9 blocks when the score hit 15-15 in the 5th set.

“Minnesota executed some really high-level swings tonight in some areas that you’re just not going to defend,” Coach Kelly Sheffield said. “I mean, some of these were very, very deep in the court and between defensive players where it didn’t matter how much effort. “It was just really high execution on their part.”

After Gophers outside McKenna Wucherer granted the Badgers a reprieve with an attacking error on a 16-15 Gophers match point, the Badger block finally came through.

The Badgers forced set points at 17-16 and 18-17 with stuffs of Lydia Grote and Wucherer, but the Gophers were able to force deuce again each time.

Then Bah Gawd, it was CC Crawford’s music.

Crawford is one of those players you love on your team and hate on anyone else’s. She wears her heart on her sleeve and has a flair for the dramatic. She also has a knack for coming up big in the biggest moments.

The point at 18-18 was a microcosm of the intensity of the entire match. Saige Damrow made two wild stabs to keep deep balls alive and then Crawford somehow kept the ball alive after Julia Orzol hit the ball into the block.

Then, when Gopher senior setter Melani Shaffmaster tried to go over on two, Crawford was right there to send it straight back. Did she emote a little bit? Sure she did. And if you’re a Badger fan, you loved it. To Badger hater, not so much.

It was only fitting that Crawford finished the match by rejecting Julia Hansen’s first swing to give the Badgers an epic 20-18 win in the 5th set. .

“I feel like it’s just huge pride that we were there, we wouldn’t be able to be in the same spot a few months before,” Orzol said. “Just the amount of work we put in and figuring stuff out like every day in the gym. “That’s something that was definitely in the air in (the locker room).”

“I think that we just finally figured out that it was going to be the biggest battle,” Damrow said. “Then we just kind of dug in like it was a dog fight. As Kelly said, we rolled around in the mud and we came out on top.”

…

The Badgers came into Wednesday’s match putting up a run of gaudy numbers you don’t always see this late in the season. In the 5 post-Nebraska matches, they hit 0.393 with just 39 errors in 16 sets of play.

And through the first set, it looked like the Badgers were going to continue their fantasy volleyball-like play. The home team hit 0.429 with just 2 hitting errors in a 25-21 Set 1 win.

The second set was perhaps the team’s worst of the season, which is saying something given how the season started. The Badgers hit negative for the first set all season with 11 errors in a 25-12 shellacking broken wide open by a 10-0 serving run from Minnesota libero Zeynep Palabiyik.

The Set 3 loss then followed an arc the 2024 Badgers know all too well.

The Gophers turned a 14-13 deficit into an 18-14 lead thanks to three Badger hitting errors. The Badgers battled back to tie the score at 21-21, but then they surrendered 4 of the last 5 sets to lose another clutch set.

While the Badgers struggled offensively, the Gophers hit really well against the vaunted Badger block. They sported a 0.274 hitting percentage while sitting just one set away from a season sweep against their rivals to the southeast.

With their backs up against the wall, Wisconsin responded like, idk, a cornered badger?

They jumped out to leads of 9-4, 12-8, 19-13, and 21-14 in Set 4 before holding off a late Gopher surge to win the set 25-20. They also finally slowed the Gopher attack, holding their guests to just 0.048 hitting in the penultimate set of the match.

“I feel like we focused on the attitude that it’s all about responding,” Orzol said. “You know, it doesn’t matter what just happened. It doesn’t matter how great of a play or how bad of a play we just made. “It’s all about what’s going to happen next.”

“Minnesota, that was just great playing with them. They played great volleyball. The way their outsides, the smart shots that they were using, it was hard to figure it out. “I feel like we started to kind of get a better sense of it and put more balls up.”

…

Damrow and his backcourt mates had a lot to do with the Badger rebirth in the final two sets.

The Badgers passed very poorly in the first matchup against Minnesota, which largely neutralized their middles and made the offensive attack very predictable.

The Badger middle attack was again largely neutralized in the first three sets before Damrow and the backcourt started delivering more perfect passes that allowed them to run more first-pass quick sets to Anna Smrek and get Carter Booth, Devyn Robinson, and Crawford quality transition swings .

“I thought Saige was really, really good,” Sheffield said. “Passing and defensively and making a lot of plays. And she started making defensive plays before anybody else really started to. “I think that probably inspired the rest of us, seeing her just flying all over the place.”

Booth, Robinson, and Crawford combined for 5 kills in the do-or-die fourth set, and Smrek added two first-pass quicks to make it a middle-heavy set. Booth and Robinson added 4 more kills in Set 5 before the four blocks that delivered the Badgers their win.

Robinson and Booth were the only Badgers to finish above 0.200 hitting on the night, with Robinson tallying 8 kills on 0.429 hitting and Booth getting 5 kills on 0.455 hitting.

Franklin’s superhuman post-Nebraska run ended as she was forced to trade her cape for a lunch pail and do yeowoman’s work. She had 19 kills, but had to take 64 swings to get there, and she committed 10 errors, which is her highest total since the Texas match.

Smrek also had a rough day at the Field House office, hitting 0.077 with 9 kills and 6 errors. For the match the Badgers hit 0.158, which was their third worst total of the season.

“We grinded and grinded and they were rewarded,” Sheffield said. “Earlier in the year, I think anybody that was watching us the first handful of matches and we got pushed and we’d be overcome by frustration and questioning ourselves and thinking about the outcome and stuff like that.”

“It’s been something that this group has worked really hard at. When their backs are against the wall, you still have the opportunity to come out and set the world on fire if you stay together and you keep battling, you keep fighting.”